Chizzang wrote:JoltinJoe wrote:
But there is no reason to believe that John the Apostle was illiterate. Most historians agree that he is, at the least, the actual author of the epistle 1 John. And they also believe Peter wrote the epistles attributed to him. So there is no reason to say that all the apostles were illiterate.
No "They" don't Joe...
You do - and the Catholic Church does - but "most experts" don't believe John wrote a damn thing
Here is a question for you, smart boy. What are your reasons for denying John's actual authorship of the Gospel of John and 1 John?
And why was John universally accepted as the author for nearly 2,000, only to have his authorship challenged in recent times?
Because when all this "scholarship" is boiled down to its essence, the only reason they have for denying John's authorship is that no eyewitness would record Jesus asserting his divinity, well, because, Jesus wasn't divine so he wouldn't have said that. So therefore, John didn't really hear these things. And thus John wouldn't have written these things. The case for denying John's authorship, really first advanced in modern times, is extreme circular reasoning, and treats credible historical sources, accepted for 19 centuries, as without value.
And everything else is speculation and supposition that ignores the recording of early historians that John lived the longest life of the Apostles and settled at Ephesus. Keep in mind that, by 90 A.D. -- the approximate date of the actual writing of John -- John was likely about 80 years old. As the last surviving Apostle (all others for the most part had been rounded up and executed), John was a VERY wanted man by the Roman Empire. Thus, his whereabouts and identity, given his stature as the last known eyewitness to Christ, were strictly guarded secrets. In order to protect his identity, should the writing fall into the hands of the Empire, his Gospel refers to him as the "disciple that Jesus loved," an attribution that would be confusing to authorities, but readily understood by the faithful to refer to John as the "eyewitness" identified in 19:35. Credible historians writing in the times most proximate to the authorship of the Gospel never questioned that John was the actual author of the text. Now modern scholars, ignoring the obvious reasons why John's identity would have only been only discreetly revealed, claim that the reference to the "disciple Jesus loved" is ambiguous -- an assertion that only makes sense if you ignore the historical time and context in which the book was written (which modern scholars do).
And explicitly as to whether John could have possessed the ability to write in Greek, you should note that in Acts 4:30, both John and Peter are called uneducated (and presumably illiterate, since the Greek term implies a lack of literacy), but they marvel civil and religious leaders, who are interrogating them, with their ability to communicate in the manner of educated men. Further, Acts Chapter 2 records an event in which they speak and converse in foreign languages.
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Am I wrong in remembering that the Council of Nicea dealt with Arianism (among other issues), which involved the question of Jesus as a deity? Wasn't the purpose to discuss his divinity vs his humanity? Of course the books will refer to him being divine. The Church still had to deal with the question of his divinity as it came out of a heresy.